Syama Bunten: Today I am joined by the fabulous Abbe Large managing director of Lenox Advisors and one of forbes’s top financial security professionals. Darling, you have spent decades helping people make better financial decisions. You’ve done it with clarity with heart. I am so excited to have you share who you are today and honestly how you managed to build such a prolific career.

Syama Bunten: Working at two major companies, but not having sort of the portfolio career that we hear about today. I feel like this is impressive on, on so many fronts, but before we dive into all of the incredible things that you do today, the prolific woman that you are, I love to start with you as a little girl. So Abbe, welcome to the show.

Syama Bunten: Thank you for letting us see behind the woman on stage, and welcome to Getting Rich together.

Abbe Large: Oh, thank you for having me. This is awesome. Thank you.

Syama Bunten: Wonderful. So let’s dive in. Yeah. Pigtails, ponytails, French braids, you know, what was it like for you when you were a little girl between 10 to 12 years old?

Syama Bunten: Where were you living in this world? What was life like? What was your hair like, and what was money like around you?

Abbe Large: Okay. There were three questions in there. Where, where did I live? I grew up on Long Island. Not in on, on Long Island in Comac. We were, I guess, middle class. We never, I never really had, the relationship I had with money growing up was interesting because my parents never really spent money on us.

Abbe Large: They, and in all fairness, I’m just going to, to fast forward and let you know that, it was a dysfunctional household, and I am my dad passed away in 2019, which instilled my why in my practice, but more, I’m also estranged from my sister and my mother right now. So when you ask what is my childhood like, it was I grew up with a narcissist addict and a father that couldn’t handle conflict.

Abbe Large: And a sister that was hibernating in her room most of the time. And I was, I think from the moment I was born, I didn’t feel like I belonged to this family. Strangely enough, in fact, my mother and I never, I never got along with my sister. My mother told me this story and it, it, it, it answered a lot of questions.

Abbe Large: And of course, you know, thousands of dollars of therapy Later I realized I was pretty much abandoned as a kid. Meaning they were just never around. They were just never around. And when I was born, I. My mother got pregnant like right away and she got very sick and she went to the hospital for months and they gave me to the neighbors and then she came home after months of being away.

Abbe Large: This is my first year of life and she comes home with my sister and I come into the house and I guess that was the moment I felt like, you know. Second, I don’t know. I just was like, who is this infant and why is she here? Right? Like, so growing up it was really toxic. We didn’t really have family dinners of conversation or good food.

Abbe Large: My parents didn’t eat very well. They ate a lot of processed stuff. I also had a learning disability that went undiagnosed. And because I was. Such a strong minded child. I hid it really well, and my EQ went through the charts because my IQ is being challenged, so I’m grateful for that. Let’s see my fir.

Abbe Large: Now. Fast forward my first job because my parents didn’t spend any money on me. I remember going to the Salvation Army to buy new clothes for school when all my friends were going to the retail stores. So I, I got a job. I got, my first job was at, I was 14 years old. I was waitressing at Howard Johnson’s.

Abbe Large: I worked at Chuck E. Cheese. I got into those, you know, those, those, those costumes. And yeah, I just did anything I could to make money. And when I went off to college I had to work the entire time. I, I, I was a barmaid, I was a waitress. I just, I had to do something for money. Because I really didn’t, I, I mean, they, I was, I was grateful that they paid for my tuition, but they didn’t really pay for much else.

Abbe Large: So everything else was up to me. So hard work for me was instilled at a Very early age. if it’s gonna be, it’s up to me kind of concept. So yeah, that’s, that’s kind of how I was brought up. And, you know. I guess I’m doing now what drove my parents nuts when I was growing up, which is the fact that I could never accept the word no, and I always wanted to know why.

Abbe Large: Just tell me why. Because I said, so is not a reason. Like just tell me why. And I think that was the beginning of my. Craft that I use now because I need to understand, right? I seek to understand before I’m understood. So like why, why no. So I can turn that no into a yes thing, which was the strategy. But I didn’t have great support.

Abbe Large: I didn’t have great coaches. I didn’t have great parents. I didn’t, I, I had one teacher, one teacher who I credit today for my love of reading and for my comprehension. And I’ll tell you this story. I was in 10th grade now I think you’re 15 when you’re in 10th grade. And I was taking this class and, and then this teacher said stay after class, which I did.

Abbe Large: I was so scared, I thought I was in trouble. And she handed me a book and she said, open up a page and read it out loud. I did. And then after I was done, she said, what did you read? I said, I couldn’t answer. So she said, would you mind coming back tomorrow? After school. I said, sure, no problem. So I did, she handed me a book.

Abbe Large: It was a huge thick book called The Good Earth by Proles book. It’s a Pulitzer Prize winning book. And she said, okay, open it up. Start from, start from the first page. And I, you know, days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months, and. I mean, I was running to her class after school because I was so excited reading this book.

Abbe Large: And it was the first time in my life that I ever comprehended a book like that. And I credit her to this day for my love of reading and for going to one of the most prestigious journalism schools in the country and all of that stuff. But I, I had mentioned this to my husband a little while ago, and he said, why don’t you try and reach out to her and say, you know, let her know.

Abbe Large: Great idea. So I, I googled her and I found her email. I sent her an email. It went unanswered. I said, she’s either traveling or she’s dead. There’s no in between with this woman. And I never got a response, but the next year I was invited to my high school reunion and the guest of honor was, this teacher blew my mind.

Abbe Large: So I went and I saw her and I told her, and she gave me an inscribed book that she wrote with her son of poems. Two weeks later, I found out she died of a sudden heart attack.

Syama Bunten: No way.

Abbe Large: Wow.

Syama Bunten: Oh,

Abbe Large: yeah. Yeah. So the, the, the, I think the lesson in that story is if someone has taken the time to change your life, tell them.

Abbe Large: Yeah.

Syama Bunten: Wow. Oh wow. Okay. So here you are, finding yourself in this world largely alone, knowing that you had to work to survive to create the life that you would want. Mm-hmm. Picking up modeling from. People around you who maybe didn’t know that you were even modeling or, or trying to, to learn from them from the way that they show up, and then you export yourself into university.

Syama Bunten: And aside from knowing that you needed a job to survive, what was it else that you knew of yourself? What did you think you wanted to be? How did you organize the world that you were living in?

Abbe Large: It’s a really good question and it’s, I’m, it’s, and I’ve been talking about this a lot with a lot of other podcasters and, and I’m finally coming full circle with the why I grew up with not a lot of support.

Abbe Large: I grew up with being alone, being abandoned, right. And I was searching for something. I knew that my soul was missing something. And when I graduated from college, I got into advertising. And yes, I met some friends and I, you know, I was trying to learn, I was going to school of visual arts at night to put together my portfolio.

Abbe Large: ’cause I thought I wanted to be an art director, a copywriter. And I realized very quickly that that wasn’t really my talent. But I was just kind of like, I don’t know, I was living in Manhattan. I was paying my own, my own rent. I was living in a third floor walk up. I was, I was making I think, $17,000 at the time.

Abbe Large: I was, you know, doing whatever, I guess 22, 20 3-year-old does in New York City, you know, going out and having jello shots on the weekend and just, you know, creating friends and having fun. But like, I never had like. I, I, I, I always felt alone. Like if, if it’s, like I said, if it’s gonna be, it’s up to me.

Abbe Large: So when I was working and I realized that advertising really wasn’t for me, I switched over into the publishing slash sales area and somebody walked in my cubicle. I was an assistant at the time and I was a horrible assistant, by the way. Horrible. And he go, he looks at me and this is way before Top Gun.

Abbe Large: And he goes. You’re a maverick and I’m like, what’s that like? Yeah, totally.

Syama Bunten: Go. You didn’t

Abbe Large: even have Google, so

Syama Bunten: like, lemme

Abbe Large: Google. Back then there was no Google back then. There were no like cell phones back then. This was 30, a long, 35 years ago. And he said, you belong in sales. And so fast forward, I wind up getting a sales job at a women’s health club, and the culture in there was very catty and very not team oriented.

Abbe Large: You know, they were like taking sales. It was just not good. But they sent me to a sales seminar and I met somebody. Somebody came up to me from this financial group. I gave them my business card. They gave my business card to a sales manager, and that sales manager called me, would you like to get into the financial services business?

Abbe Large: I’m like, hello?

Syama Bunten: You’re like, I want, I’m, I’m thinking I was gonna be like an artist. You’re like, this is totally different. Yeah.

Abbe Large: This is like, no yeah, no. So he called me several times, like five or six, seven times. I’m not kidding. It was ridiculous. I finally went in just to get him off my back, and I am now realizing that what I saw in those interviews were people that were really happy.

Abbe Large: And they were really in control of their own destiny, and they were healthy. And there was this like energy, and I don’t know what it was, it was a gut feeling. And I’m like, I don’t know what’s going on here, but that’s what I want. And it, and I’m, it’s dawning on me as I’m telling this story that it’s about the culture.

Abbe Large: of where you work and the people that you’re surrounded by are pivotal in your. Career and your development. And if you don’t seek out these people that see, see you better than you actually see yourself. That was the driving force for me going to that firm. It was the culture. Whatever I had to do to be successful, I could do that.

Abbe Large: ’cause I’m not afraid of hard work. ’cause I’ve been working since I was 14, so hard work wasn’t my thing. It was finding the right people. To be surrounded by finding the right support so that when I came home and I cried every night in the shower for the, you know, the first year because it was so goddamn hard, I was grinding like crazy, grinding, grinding, grinding, grinding.

Abbe Large: But to have that support and I found my husband, I found my best friends in life who I call my brothers to this day. And I continue to have that support and, and love and devotion and trust and being a woman in a man’s industry to be able to say out loud that my, my, my peeps are fully supportive.

Abbe Large: I have never, they never put baby in the corner. Ne they made room for me at the table, you know, so I think it’s uber important to. Not only seek out the skills and the trajectory of your career, but it’s also imperative to make sure that the leadership that’s there and the people that you’re working with are your people.

Abbe Large: It’s so important. So I would say that combined with hard work meeting opportunity. That would be a big, a big ingredient to the success that I’ve had. Hard work, meeting the opportunity, having the right people around you to support you, to believe in you, to see things in you that you can’t see for yourself just yet.

Abbe Large: All of those things are just so pivotal to my success.

Syama Bunten: I love that. And so with this first, with this first job, obviously you were making more than $17,000 a year. Hopefully with the first,

Abbe Large: in my first year Yeah. Going into this business, I I was on Lifetime Television. I won freshman five, which is an industry, you know, this company’s way of saying you are the top five advisor in the company in their first year in the business, and that’s.

Abbe Large: In countrywide. was the only woman up there. Yep. And come full circle, I just this company also has like their top 12 advisors in the entire company and I was one of those top 12, the only woman on that stage and mine. I say I’m very proud of this fact for this company. With MassMutual, this particular company that I write a lot of business with, MassMutual I am the only woman in their history since 1851 who has won both Freshman five and Chairman’s Club.

Syama Bunten: Snap you go. Wow. Abbe. Wow. I mean, yeah, you should be. I’m proud of that. I mean, all women should be proud of that. Like that is, you know, that is a big deal. We all stand behind you. You are a rockstar. So what was it, what was it like, you know, your, your career has two very strong anchor points, you know, and, and to sort of.

Syama Bunten: Navigate and cultivate your skills to develop family, to sort of like start to anchor yourself around things. That sounds like coming up in this world, things were fragmented, disjointed, lonely, right? And then to now find yourself what sounding like to be able to create and also experience like friendship, love, stability.

Syama Bunten: You know, the ability to now say like, I don’t have to depend on this unstable. Family structure and, and have to worry how to navigate that emotionally. But now you get to set the tenor. And the tone of your life, you know, and you got to really grow up within these two anchor points. What were some of the inflection moments for you where you were like, holy shit.

Syama Bunten: Like I am, I’m arriving, you know, and I’m sure there were many, but what was like the first moment where you were like, I, I am arriving, I am feeling secure. In my life, I’m starting to feel secure in who I am and maybe just maybe you can breathe a little bit and, and it’s less emotionally chaotic and maybe a little bit more peaceful.

Abbe Large: That started about five years ago, I would say even more so now that I’ve reached that pinnacle point in my career. I’m like, okay, I did it. Okay. That’s cool. Having said all that, when you reach that level of success, there’s a little bit of what crept in was self self-doubt and imposter syndrome.

Abbe Large: So in the beginning of the year, I was, when I, when that was announced, I, I was like, whoa. Like, I don’t know, I just, it was very strange. But, but, but what I’m realizing now. Is that those uncomfortable feelings that I was feeling like do I belong here? Like I’m really playing with the big, with the big boys now.

Abbe Large: Like, I’m like, I’m like up there and people are listening to me and my words matter. And it’s just like, what? Like I’m just me. I just wanna be little old me. Right? Like, but I’m realizing that the, those uncomfortable feelings of. Believe it or not, the more successful that you become, the the weirder it feels because you, you just, you’re just, you’re just being you, your authentic you.

Abbe Large: And you’re like, really? That worked? Like what?

Syama Bunten: You’re like, get outta here.

Abbe Large: Really, really, like, I didn’t for that. You know? I, I just am and, and what I’m realizing though is those uncomfortable feelings. Are part of the growth, it’s part of getting to that next level. It’s, it’s that uncomfortable atmosphere that you are entered into where you’re, it’s like uncharted waters.

Abbe Large: Like I’ve never been in that position before. Okay, well this is new. And so I, I, I don’t know. I flipped the feelings of this self-doubt, imposter syndrome, weird. Like, do I belong to fucking, I belong? I worked my butt off and you know what? I’m a pretty goddamn good advisor and I’ve been giving advice for 32 years, and I have clients, I have clients from.

Abbe Large: I just had brunch with one of my first clients from 32 years ago. Wow. What was that like? What was that feeling like? It’s funny that you say that because my husband joined me and when we left he said, you know, you’re a hero to that family. I said, what do you mean? He goes, you, you did their financial planning, you did all their insurance policies.

Abbe Large: You made sure that that family, because, because one of them is disabled and on a claim, a disability insurance claim. And I had, he bought a disability insurance policy from me, and he’s, he’s disabled. He has, he has a Parkinson’s and. His policies paying out if the life insurance policies did what they were supposed to do.

Abbe Large: You know, it, it, it just, all of the advice that I had given him over the years allows them to sit in a restaurant and have a conversation about their kids in college and what they’re doing and that like, their life has not been put on hold. Their life has not been disrupted because of this, because I did the proper planning with them.

Abbe Large: So it feels incredibly. Humbling, grateful and empowering all at the same time that I could do that for them because I, I really fight for my clients. Like I fight for what’s right because I’ve experienced, I’ve been in my client’s shoes. My father died. He needed disability insurance, long-term care insurance.

Abbe Large: We needed the life insurance. My, you know, the investment component, all of this stuff that I do. I was in the driver’s seat and I, my client’s seat, I should say, and I experienced. What it feels like to be in a toxic environment with family and not have to worry about money. Wow. That’s powerful. Because money, oh my God, the mere topic of it can just decimate families.

Abbe Large: Yeah,

Syama Bunten: I’m sure you’ve seen it. I mean, I’m sure you’ve been in

Abbe Large: the, in seen it all, in the

Syama Bunten: thick of it,

Abbe Large: seen it all. I, I’ve got the very difficult job of when I am, of, of, of educating people on what their lives are going to look like 25, 30 years from now. I have to do that. Why do I do that? Because I see it.

Abbe Large: I’ve lived it. I, I watched the train, leave the station, and I could see the wreck. And they don’t, they just, they just get on the train and they leave the station and most people don’t see 20, 30 years from now. But when I do financial planning, it’s, let’s talk about, now you’re in your accumulation phase.

Abbe Large: Let’s talk about the distribution phase. What’s gonna be your halftime report? How are you going to take money out? What’s that gonna look like? What’s your distribution strategy? And then preservation strategy. What do you wanna leave as a legacy? How do you wanna be remembered? What do you want your children?

Abbe Large: What do you want for your children? Talk to me about. How your legacy looks. And so we talk about all those things in, in the planning and you know, when you, when you recommend certain products to solve problems. And then to watch those products actually do what I said that they were gonna do.

Syama Bunten: You’re like, I’m so good at this.

Abbe Large: That’s, that’s freaking cool.

Syama Bunten: Yeah, totally. I love that. And so Abbe, you know, as you, obviously you have children. You know, being in this world of money, we’re certainly just being born on the planet. We are born with a relationship to money, and then your whole life has been about other people and, and stewarding their money and making sure that they’re doing the right things.

Syama Bunten: When you were starting your family, you know, what were some of the conversations that you guys had at home? Obviously your children have had a very different life than you had growing up, so I imagine just emotion. I mean, the whole thing is probably a total 180, but what was it like for you to start to think about.

Syama Bunten: Creating stability and what was important and having these conversations with your husband about sort of future planning. Tell me, spill the tea, what was that like for you guys?

Abbe Large: Well, there’s a growing there’s the parenting side of that, right? Behavior wise. And then there’s the monetary side of that raising financially fit kids, which is the second part of your question.

Abbe Large: So the first part of your question is. I wanted to break the chain. And so there are a lot of people out there that have not broken the chain and they don’t see the narcissistic tendencies that are out there but they don’t see the dysfunction in the relationships, and it just continues to the next generation.

Abbe Large: I refused to raise my children the way I was raised, refused. I wasn’t a helicopter parent by any stretch of the imagination. I worked the, their entire lives, but I did it openly, transparently, and with grace. We spoke about finances all the time at the dinner table. It was never a, a taboo conversation.

Abbe Large: We, I’ll give you a stupid little example. Well, lights are on. We’d, we’d, we’d show them the bill that we had to pay. This is the bill for the, for the electricity bill. Like this is how much it costs to heat this house. This is how much it’s cost to light this house. And they were like, whoa.

Syama Bunten: Totally. I’m sure they were like, oh my God, I had no idea.

Syama Bunten: I’m never turning another

Abbe Large: light on again, to my point. Exactly. Now my kids walk around turning the lights off. Right. So that’s just a really small example of the things that we would do to get them to respect, understand, and appreciate. What we were doing, that we didn’t come from money that we’re working our tushes off, that we’re trying to be good parents, that we’re trying to do all these things.

Abbe Large: I was, I was, I was, what I, what I say, I’m a tough parent. I don’t know, but I always, I meant what I said and I said what I meant, and I don’t think a lot of parents do that. They, you know, for example, if you do this, we’re leaving. If you continue to do this, we’re leaving these like empty threats. Kids are really smart.

Abbe Large: They will get away with, they will wa they will get away with anything as, as, as long as they can. And when someone doesn’t hold their word accountable to the child, it’s a signal that I could do whatever I want. So when my kid was acting up or did something and I gave them an ultimatum of the repercussions of that behavior, oh, I did it.

Abbe Large: I felt, I fell through, I, I not fell through, followed through. So if they were acting a certain way, I said, we’re leaving. We left. Questions And I didn’t, I didn’t yell nothing. We just left. I’ll give you a funny story. When my older children were in high school, they had their cell phones, right? It was like the beginning of this, the cell phone use in, in high school, and they were just brats one day.

Abbe Large: And I was like, I’m so pissed off. I’m gonna turn off their cell. I’m gonna turn off their, their cellular data. So I called up the, I called up Verizon. I turned it off the data, and I, and I, I get, I, they get home and I’m like waiting for them to say something to me. I’m like waiting to hear the complaint.

Abbe Large: Like something what? Nothing. And I’m like, did you guys notice anything different with your phones today? They’re like, no. I’m like, what do you mean I turned the service off? They go, ma, we have wifi in high school.

Syama Bunten: Good on you though, for trying to prove.

Abbe Large: I tried, you know, it’s really funny. They had this exact same reaction that you did. They tried laughing.

Syama Bunten: I mean, good effort though, you know that, that’s, that’s really good. Good effort. Yeah. How how did you and your husband sort of come up with like. I don’t know your, your own vision. Your own wealth vision together, was it always like aligned off the bat? Like, we’re both having this mentality, like, these are our frameworks, or was there Oh, yeah.

Syama Bunten: You know? Yeah. How did you guys sort of decide like, these are our major, you know, goals or pillars or these are our philosophies around things. Well, when you say around things, what particular things are you referring to?

Syama Bunten: It’s a great clarifier. You know the ways in which you were going to, let’s say.

Syama Bunten: Invest or spend your money, you know, indexing on, on vacations or experiences or prioritizing maybe the neighborhoods you live in or, you know, how did you guys start to organize, I guess, life decisions and, and come up with a joint philosophy?

Abbe Large: That’s a really good question. It’s a feel we both come from the same.

Abbe Large: We’re cut from the same cloth. You know, we both had some.

Abbe Large: What’s the word I’m trying to find? Challenging childhoods. My husband, not so much, but he was raised by a German mother, a wonderful father, but his father passed away at 17 and he was 17 when my husband was 17, not the father. He passed away suddenly and it was very traumatic. And then he went, he was thrusted right into college, so he had no money.

Abbe Large: He had three jobs. It, I mean like no money. And, and my husband and I met we met at this, this financial firm that I am now still at. And he’s now, he’s now the president and CEO of, of this firm. But we grew up in the business together and. We were always going down the same path. We’ve, we’ve always had the same values.

Abbe Large: And if our values were ever challenged I don’t know. We always have this, we’re always in sync with how we raise. We talk about our children all the time to this day. We leverage the relationships. We, we, we, we. Talk about strategy and what are you gonna say? What am I gonna say? What’s feel, I don’t know.

Abbe Large: We’re, we’re like this family of very in tuned best friends and we’re very authentic and open with each other. And. I don’t know. It’s like if we wanted to buy, like if we had to make a major decision, let’s say a real estate decision or what, whatever, you know, the decision is, okay, do we clean out all of our savings and spend it on this?

Abbe Large: Particular piece of property so that we can have a place, like a happy place for our home, for our family. That’s like a hub everybody wants to go to. Is the money better spent experiencing that and creating that for our family, or is it better left in the, in the bank, we made a decision that it was better to spend it on the real estate.

Abbe Large: It’s still an asset, it’s still an allocation, but it, but it created this family where. Everybody loves going to this place, everybody. So we’re very aligned with those kinds of things. And we don’t push each other. If I wanna say, for example, if I wanna redecorate my house, something in my house, like. It’s something that I’m not gonna push on.

Abbe Large: But, you know, my husband wanted to wait till the dog passed away because it, he would pee on the carpets and ruin our, you know, ruin things. He’s like, can we just wait till the dog passes? And like, okay, well it was a while. 17 years. 17 years. But we’re finally doing it. But we, you know, it, it’s, it’s, we’re always.

Abbe Large: If we’re not in lockstep, we’re always discussing and strategizing how we can get there. And it’s a, it’s a lot of give and take. But in terms of, we always had the philosophy, family comes first, period, end of conversation. Family comes first. Yeah. So, and in terms of vacations, I’ll give you a funny story.

Abbe Large: We usually go on a family vacation like you want every couple years. And this one time the kids were, you know, not out of the house. In our minds, we have 18 years to be a stern parent out, out outside of that, you like your job’s over, then you become a consultant. Once they turn 18, it’s like once they’re out of the house, it’s, it’s, it’s not as easy.

Abbe Large: So in my mind, I had 18 years that I had a, like, that was it. How am I gonna make them appreciate what, you know, money, how am I gonna make them understand what, what hard work is is? Like, how am I gonna, you know, how am I gonna do this one time? And how are we gonna, how are we going to give them the value of what money can buy and, and how are they gonna work together when they’re in different relationships outside of, you know, their spouses when they’re older?

Abbe Large: How are they gonna plan? How are they gonna negotiate? How are they gonna compromise? How are they gonna communicate? All of these things we addressed when they were under our roof. The way that we did it was we gave them a budget for the vacation. We said, here, this is our budget. You, you guys work together to figure out where we’re going, how we’re getting there, where we’re staying, and what we’re doing and where we’re eating.

Abbe Large: Mm-hmm. They came back with a presentation and showed and everything and, and we are like, okay, we approve. Let’s do this. And we literally showed up. We just showed up and they learned how to communicate with each other. They learned how to argue effectively with each other, or I should say disagree.

Abbe Large: Constructively with each other. They learned how, what things cost, the value of them when you, like, they learned customer service. They learned, you know, what things, you know, the, the, what you’re getting for what you’re paying for. All of these things. They, they just learned it all in this exercise and I, I.

Abbe Large: I did you not? They make, they make their own travel plans. They, they’re dealing, they, they have their own credit cards that deal with the points I want. My daughter’s got a whole thing going. She’s like, she’ll, she’ll go and she’ll do my errands and put everything on her card and then Venmo me when I owe her.

Abbe Large: So she gets the points. It’s hysterical, like, all right, you’re, you’re fine. You’re okay. That’s okay. But there, there, there. But. Most importantly, it taught them how to work together because you have to work together with your spouse for your life. You have to work together, and some people don’t have those skills.

Abbe Large: So I think it’s important to teach those skills. We taught them when they were under our roof. You also gotta teach them how sidebar, you have to teach ’em how to party the right way so that when they go off to college, they don’t get in trouble.

Abbe Large: I mean, that’s true. You know, you

Abbe Large: gotta get, you’re throwing drunk before you go to college. You gotta get it out because if you go to college, something bad, bad, very bad.

Syama Bunten: You know, my, my younger sister, she’s 12 years younger than me, and when she went off to college, I remember telling her, her first week there, I was like, do you see that girl at that party?

Syama Bunten: She’s like, what girl? I’m like, you know that girl at that party? She’s like, yeah. I’m like. Don’t be that girl.

Abbe Large: Exactly. Don’t be that girl.

Syama Bunten: You know who I’m talking about, right?

Abbe Large: Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah, and and you could see it coming when the parents don’t allow them, like they’re helicopter parents. They don’t allow ’em to do anything.

Syama Bunten: I mean, oh my God. I’m like, they don’t. I remember one of my daughter’s friends, they weren’t allowed to sleep over anybody’s house, and I’m like, oh my God. Oh my God, that is so wild. So, you know what’s so interesting is, and then, and I feel like there are so many beautiful threads and through lines and, and like way to weave this, this tapestry, you know, when it comes to your experiences, both on the receiving end of the financial world, right? Making decisions on your own, you know, policies and insurance and you know, and then also sort of being on the other side of advising and guiding.

Syama Bunten: You know, give spill the T here. Like, you know, being on the receiving end of having to make these life decisions. And then also on the very same day or next day, having to support others in making those decisions. What does it feel like? I mean, it, you know, I feel like there’s this intellectual component where you know so much, right, and you can make great decisions, but then there’s also this deeper.

Syama Bunten: Emotional side, right? The side of like, oh, my family, my mortality, my legacy. What’s it been like for you to sort of navigate, you know, being so intimated and, and obviously you and your husband are in the same space, right? So you guys both know way more than you should, but what is it like to start navigate both of those things?

Abbe Large: Well, I think that. Everyone in my business should own and experience everything that you recommend. You have to, because I’ll give you an example. I, I wanna open up a donor advised fund. Okay. I have a client that’s opening up a donor advised fund, and I’m, I’m, we’re helping her do that, and I wanna do the same thing, so I’m like.

Abbe Large: I need to do this myself because she’s gonna ask all these questions and I need to feel the process. I can’t just think it, I have to feel it. I have to feel, I, I, I opened up a trust account last weekend, took an hour. I was like, oh my God. This is what my clients are doing. This is, this is, this is tedious.

Abbe Large: Like I’m experiencing this. What a pain in the butt. So with all these experiences, there’s an authenticity. Authenticity that you cannot deny because I felt it, I’ve experienced it, and if I’ve experienced it, I can share with you what it feels like and I can ask those questions or I could explain it in a way that’s not telling them, it’s sharing with them and it becomes kind of their idea as well, right?

Abbe Large: Like I, I. It. Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s the experiences that, I’ll say it again. It’s the experiences that causes that authenticity and you cannot, that authenticity the way it comes through, you can’t fake that. Like, that’s real, right? Like, so the way that you say it. You say it the way it feels, and it’s not canned.

Abbe Large: It’s not scripted. It’s coming from the heart, and it’s coming from a place of caring like, like I just went through this and I know how this feels. This is exactly how you need to do it, and this is what needs, this is what’s gonna happen. And I think most people don’t set the expectations for people because that involves time.

Abbe Large: It is time, energy, money, it’s a whole thing. And a lot of people don’t wanna do it because of several reasons. They don’t wanna deal with it because they can’t talk among themselves with about it. They can’t talk to their spouse. About money or planning. So they don’t do anything or they can’t figure out like who’s gonna take care of their kids so they don’t do any, any planning or whatever.

Abbe Large: Then you have people that have done planning, but it’s completely outdated, like, you know, 15 years ago, outdated. And then you have people that have done the planning, but if really done, it’s done crappy planning. ’cause there are people out there that don’t know what they’re doing. So I find this to be the norm, one of those three scenarios, and it’s, and for me it’s important to make sure we’re, we’re crossing the t’s and.in the, i’s because you could make one silly mistake, like put the estate down as a beneficiary on your life insurance, for example, and that’s subject to probate.

Abbe Large: And you’re not gonna get the full, you’re not gonna get the full death benefit. Most likely ’cause it’s gonna go through probate. You need to have a direction. I came across someone that I was doing a discovery call with and she had a policy, her husband had passed and she only got half the death benefit.

Abbe Large: And I’m thinking why? She’s like, I, I had to go through probate and I’m like, the only reason why that would happen is because someone put the estate down as the Ben primary beneficiary.

Abbe Large: caused this woman hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Syama Bunten: when I found this out and Oh, and when I was going through my benefits, I don’t know why my deferred comp had the estate listed.

Abbe Large: I, I was like, are you kidding me? Me? It’s listed on there as a state. Oh my God. If it’s listed for me. And, and that mistake was found while I was going through my own stuff. So I just sent out this week, I don’t know, 50 emails to all of my top clients. You’re going through your bene, it’s bene, it’s open enrollment time.

Abbe Large: Let me help you make sure your be check, double check your beneficiaries. You’d be surprised how many people list the estate. So these little tiny things that are mad for people, but it’s because, oh my, ’cause I was so flipping upset about it with my own, I was like, oh my God, I have to tell everybody, you know?

Abbe Large: So I think I’m no stranger to any of this because I’ve done everything myself. So I’m able to share that experience with my clients and be able to have the empathy and the authenticity to get them to move in the right direction.

Syama Bunten: Hmm, that’s powerful. You know, there’s there’s something that you said about.

Syama Bunten: Sharing the lived experience and about the words that you use that come from the heart. You can’t really fake the funk. You know? It’s like either you know it, you feel it, you can talk about it with this like resonance, or it’s a sales script and no one buys it. And it’s like, you know it like it just doesn’t.

Syama Bunten: It doesn’t land, right? I mean, there’s something really powerful about stewarding people through the lens of your experiences and ushering them based on your own lived thoughts. And it’s, it’s powerful. I mean, I, I really wish onto the industry more humans like you. You know,

Abbe Large: thank you. It’s funny that you say that because I’m being sought out because of this.

Abbe Large: It’s, it’s interesting. My podcasts are getting out there and people are hearing the authenticity in my voice, and I’m getting so many people calling me wanting to work with me because of that so real. They want

Syama Bunten: someone real, you know? And, and like someone who’s not afraid to say, you know, thi this is.

Syama Bunten: This isn’t posturing, this isn’t, you know, trying to be something else. This is being who you are and standing in your greatness and the gift that you are here to really help others with, which is, which is powerful. And, you know, you stand amongst the 0.0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0 1% of women who’ve been able to, you know, hit, hit these certain.

Syama Bunten: Professional milestones and, and reach certain levels of success in this space. And, you know, I’m curious, like you’ve been in this industry now for decades. You’ve hit, you’ve hit personal milestones, and yet we’re also seeing less women take on these roles of advisors. You know, I know there’s like a shortage of, of, you know, of, of female advisors who are opting in and yet every day.

Syama Bunten: You know, we’re hearing about the great wealth transfer or seeing women sort of rise up in their financial agency simply just through the maturation of time. You know, it’s now been 50 years since we could get a house on our own and you know, and so we’re starting to see this interesting. Confluence of wealth transfer and also wealth maturation.

Syama Bunten: Right. And sort of what it looks like. And you know, we need more women and, and men who are sort of speaking that language of high emotional intelligence and sort of understanding what it’s like to. Lead with the heart. What’s your experience or how are you sort of seeing all of these components come together and what is your hope for this, you know, next decade I guess, of, of women needing stewards like yourself to, to really catalyze things?

Abbe Large: You bring up an excellent point, and I thank you for bringing it up because I, something happened a few years ago that change changed the way. I view only speaking to the primary breadwinner because I’m the usually the only woman in the room. And because most of the people that I see client-wise are men.

Abbe Large: Throughout the years, I, you know, I had traveled, I had, you know, my, my family moved to Texas. I failed to tell you that, but they did move. They sold their house when I was 21, so I was also by myself in New York City. They sold my childhood home. But that’s, that’s a, that’s, that’s that history. So I was traveling a lot and I would meet with the husband usually ’cause he was the primary breadwinner and we would do the planning.

Abbe Large: Okay. Fast forward. I had a client who passed away, and I kid you not, he had a policy that every year we have a, a conservation team at my firm, Lenox Advisors, who are solely there to make sure that policies stay on the books because. Things get unintentionally lapsed for travel. They missed it.

Abbe Large: They got sick, they were in the hospital. Whatever. Things get missed and policies fall off the books and then there’s no coverage. And insurance carrier is only required to send one, one statement, one premium statement. That’s it. They’re only required one at Lenox. We just like hound the like email, call everything to get in touch with them and, and.

Abbe Large: Nine times outta 10. It’s an unintentional thing that’s happening. So this client of mine would come dangerously close to lapsing his policy every single year we would chase him for the premium. Well, one summer I get a phone call from his wife. She’s hysterical, crying. And he died on a business trip. Yeah, in his fifties.

Abbe Large: Had a massive heart attack and died, and she was lost. She was confused. She didn’t know who to call, who to speak to where anything was. The only thing that he told her was if something happens to me, you call Abbe Large, and she remembered my phone number. He made her remember it. So here I am listening to this and I’m like, oh my God, did he pay his premium?

Abbe Large: I said, let me call you back. I just wanna make sure the policy’s in good order. Thank God it was, thank you. My conservation team, I’m giving you kudos right now because the policy was in good order and it was. Millions of dollars that was paid to her. But she had, she was lost, like she didn’t know anything.

Abbe Large: I had to give her language for people because they were coming out of the woodworks trying to get the money. And it was this, this, I don’t know, it, it gave me the ick that I didn’t meet her. Like what? How did I not meet her throughout all of these years? And in that moment, granted. I did the right thing.

Abbe Large: I protected her. I protected their family. They didn’t have to sell their home. They were able to put their kids through college. Kudos, yes, fabulous. But what did I do wrong here? So now I refuse to not meet the spouse during the discovery call because they’ll say, the men will say, oh, she’s not interested.

Abbe Large: Are you sure she’s not interested to make sure she can stay in the house if something happened to you. Are you sure she’s not interested to make sure she can send the kids off to college with no problem economically. Are you sure she has enough money to live for the rest of her life comfortably in the house that she would like to be at?

Abbe Large: Are you sure she’s not interested?

Abbe Large: rhetorical questions, but they’re like, you’re right. Of course I’ll include her, and I am leaning into the men. Now. I’m not leaning into the women, I’m leaning into the men because now it’s up to the men to include them. Stop putting baby in a corner. Does not belong in the corner.

Abbe Large: She belongs at the table and listening to what’s going on because she has feelings and she has thoughts and opinions that you sometimes have probably not heard out loud. And I’m gonna get to the bottom of those feelings. So we’re gonna meet together and if we don’t meet together, we’re not meeting at all.

Abbe Large: That’s the way I work. It’s a non, so I’m leaning into men now because men need to change that narrative. It’s. Because women get together all the time and talk about it. It’s the same narrative with women, right? Women this, women that women don’t do this. Women we know that. We know that already. But the men need to know and they need to change their narrative and their behavior, and that’s what I’m doing right now.

Syama Bunten: Fabulous. Abbe, I, I feel like I could grab a cocktail with you and chat with you for, for so many more hours. Unfortunately. I know that we’re coming up on time. I have two quick questions to, to wrap up our, our lovely conversation today. The first is around, obviously we’ve talked so much about money and all the ways to, and, you know.

Syama Bunten: Deploy it and how to have conversations and some of the more emotional sides of it. Certainly money can also be really fun. And so I would love to ask you, what has been your most recent, most fabulous way of spending your money recently? Abbe.

Abbe Large: Wow,

Abbe Large: that’s a really good question.

Abbe Large: Huh? I know this is gonna sound really weird,

Abbe Large: probably paying my assistant her bonus.

Syama Bunten: Yeah. Tell me more.

Abbe Large: I, I couldn’t live without her. I just appreciate the work that she does so much. I’m so bad at doing so many things, but I’m so good at doing the other things and we flip flop. What I’m really good at, she’s really bad at what I’m really bad at.

Abbe Large: She’s really good at, and I am I have absolutely no problem paying someone to help me. There’s no shame in asking for help, and I need a lot of help. I know what I’m good at and I want to stay in that lane.

Syama Bunten: I love that. That’s beautiful.

Abbe Large: Is that crazy?

Syama Bunten: I love it. I think that’s so sweet and, and also honest.

Syama Bunten: And my, my final question is obviously you stand in service to support and steward so many families in making the right decisions for themselves, and you are a beacon of resources for so many. And yet also we are always calling things in, wanting things, support, et cetera. How can our audience champion you?

Syama Bunten: What can we do to support you? What are you calling in?

Abbe Large: Well, the ask would be to, if you like hearing this and you like my jam, then and you need some, even if you don’t need, even if you feel like you’re buttoned up. Nine times outta 10, there’s something. There’s something that’s not accurate, and I would be more than happy to work with.

Abbe Large: Very cool people that can appreciate honesty and authenticity and are ready to, you know, get to work and, and, and be responsible financially. I would love to help, I love helping people because it’s, it’s empowering for me to, to, to feel financially secure and to see the relief on other people’s faces and their body language to feel that sense of pride that they’ve done something and they feel good about it.

Abbe Large: That’s like. That’s my ass. Like who are you? Who’s out there? And you can call me, you can email me. The best way to get me is through my email. You want me to share that?

Syama Bunten: I’ll, I’ll have it in the show notes if you wanna, if you wanna share it live, you can.

Abbe Large: No, that’s fine. You’ll have it in the show notes. But those that don’t go to the show notes, it’s, it’s a large lenox advisors.com and that’s L-E-N-O-X, not two Ns, L-E-N-O-X-A-D-V-I-S-O-R-S.

Abbe Large: I’ve had several people, you know, try to connect with me once they hear me, but, you know, I’m looking for cool people that have that have a desire to do some good planning and that can appreciate the authenticity that I bring to the table.

Syama Bunten: Wonderful. Abbe, it’s been an absolute gift to have you here today.

Syama Bunten: Thank you for your honesty, your integrity for stewarding so many into the world of being able to do what they do best. Right? And, and financial planning isn’t for everyone, and luckily it’s for you because we, because we need more people with grace to be supporting us. Thank you so much for sharing your story today on getting rich together.

Syama Bunten: Grateful to have you.

Abbe Large: Thank you for having me. You asked amazing questions and I had a great time. Thank you.